"Through the use of HTML5 and CSS3, KF8 allows publishers to create great-looking books in all categories, particularly those that require rich formatting and design, such as technical & engineering books and cookbooks," Amazon announced. Other features are well suited to graphic novels, comics, and kids' books, Amazon said.

The move reflects the gradual expansion of e-book abilities. Pure text is fine for many books, and it's well suited to the constraints of apps to read on small mobile-phone screens, but graphics are crucial for many markets.

Using Web technology means Amazon gets to capitalize on widely used standards and piggyback on industry efforts for improvements such as hardware-accelerated rendering in browsers.

"In the coming months KF8 will be rolled out to our latest generation Kindle e-ink devices as well as our free Kindle reading apps," Amazon said.

Amazon released two tools for the new book format, called KF8, or Kindle Format 8. KindleGen is a utility to convert source material written in other formats into KF8. And the Kindle Previewer lets authors see how their books will look on the wide variety of devices where Kindle books can be read.

About the author

Stephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and covers browsers, Web development, digital photography and new technology. In the past he has been CNET's beat reporter for Google, Yahoo, Linux, open-source software, servers and supercomputers. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces.
See full bio